Hello! I am Mary Mulvihill. I am an artist and teach art. I live in Temecula, California. Art is a part of my day, everyday. I look, I see. I paint, I write. Art gives meaning to what I experience. This blog is about my thoughts on the process of painting. I also post information useful to my students.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

For those joining me on the contour line and color adventure on Tuesday afternoons this January and February, here's a sneak peek at where we are headed. This PDF courtesy of www.artistsnetwork.com covers Charles Reid's approach to lost and found edges. We'll be talking about this!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Two exhibits at LACMA (LA County Museum of Art) February 28th through May 9th, 2010.

Renoir in the 20th Century

February 14–May 9, 2010

Renoir in the 20th Century focuses on the last three decades of Renoir’s career, when, following his rupture with impressionism, he turned to an art that was decorative, classical, and informed by a highly personal interpretation of the Great Tradition. Renoir’s paintings from this period, which have never been studied and shown as such, are often misunderstood as they do not fit comfortably into the history of high modernism. This exhibition is the first monographic study dedicated to Renoir since the comprehensive retrospective of 1985 at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris, and the first one ever mounted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Offering an unprecedented look at Renoir through the lens of modernism, the exhibition bridges the divide that exists in many people’s minds between art of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries

American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915

February 28–May 23, 2010

From the colonial period to the present, Americans have been inventing characters and plots, settings and situations to give meaning to our everyday lives. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915includes seventy-five paintings, from before the Revolution to the start of World War I, that tell these stories in scenes of family life and courting, work and leisure, comic mishaps and disasters. These daily experiences were all subject to the artist’s searching and revealing eye and many of the works on view are famous images known to almost every American. Major artists such as Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer, John Singleton Copley and George Caleb Bingham, John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt, are included in this important survey, the first of its kind in over thirty years.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

I had to opportunity to speak with Carl Love at the TVAL Open House and I enjoyed the conversation very much. The gallery is featured in his column in the Press-Enterprise. We greatly appreciate the coverage. Thank you, Carl. Let's get out and paint Temecula!

"Local Artists Paint Bright Future"

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

By CARL LOVE

Special to the Press-Enterprise

'Are you related to Ralph Love?"

It's a question I hadn't heard in at least five years, but I heard it twice in one night on Saturday. It must have meant I was around artists, a rare treat in these parts.

Love -- him, not me -- was Temecula's most famous artist. There is the Ralph Love Plein Air Festival held in Old Town Temecula, but artists here are focusing on the Temecula Valley Art League's open house for its gallery at 41789 Nicole Lane.

Eighteen league members have about 100 paintings on display on the walls of the front room. It's one of a few local galleries, a sad commentary for an area that's become so urban.

Temecula fancies itself as a destination with its Wine Country, Old Town and balloon festival. Yet our shortage of galleries is not what you'd expect from a place that's trying to be sophisticated.

Doing its part to change that is the Art League, founded as a nonprofit in 1977 by Mary Davis, who was there Saturday.

This is the first time the group has had a permanent home, about 1,600 square feet to hold its monthly meetings, display art, conduct classes, host shows, and serve as a gathering place for artists.

One art teacher, Mary Mulvihill, said four of her students -- Adria Di Maria, Jennifer Morlan, June Kakowski and Tim Russell -- have work displayed here.

"There is something exciting about being in a gallery," she says.

Works in the front room included lots of flowers, animals, a few western scenes and some snow and beach paintings. Yet it was hard to find anything local from our Wine Country, Old Town, balloon festival, agriculture heritage and trademark subdivisions.

"We are lagging" in paintings of local scenes, Mulvihill says. So much so that Japanese tourists who visited recently had to be referred to Temecula City Hall, where works featuring local scenes can be found.

"If anybody is going to do it (create art of local things), we're going to do it," Mulvihill says.

Nobody knows better than Davis, an artist who won the community citizen of the year award in 1972. She also took lessons from Love, who she says worked in a room that was all black. An ordained minister, she said at times he also gave sermons while painting. You know artists; they can have their quirks.

"He was very religious, very quiet," she says. "What he said was the word."

Love, who owned a studio called the Art Shack, sold paintings for a fundraiser to get the art league up and running. She bought some paintings and is willing to display them at the new gallery.

"They are kind of priceless," she says.

No doubt he would have enjoyed the new space, which has almost tripled the Art League's membership since it opened. Membership is $30 a year and President Carol Landry, at 951-303-8100, has more information.

Landry has big plans for the Art League's new space, staffed by volunteers. Art walks and juried shows are held every month. A western wildlife art show is planned in May.

Bea Taylor is one local artist thrilled to have a spot to display her work.

"After 32 years we finally have a permanent place to show our art," she says. "It's wonderful that I can share my work."

Besides her art in the front room, Taylor also has her paintings displayed in the back rooms, including two in the restroom.

"I don't mind," she says happily.

When it comes to a permanent place to show their work after all these years of wandering, local artists aren't about to be picky.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

"Drawing: The Head", by Andrew Loomis, covers the proportion of the head for different ages, the placement of the features, how to visualize the head in planes and the simple bone structure of the head and neck. $8.95

"The Human Figure", by John Vanderpoel focuses on the features of the face as shapes of light and shadow. It is text dense and not an easy read, but very worth the effort. The margin drawings illustrate the text description of the planes and muscles of each feature from different angles. I recommend reading the text and copying the margin illustration in your sketchbook. $6.95

"The Artist's Complete Guide to Drawing the Head" by William Maughan is excellent for both drawers and painters. It covers line versus value, form and cast shadows, negative shapes, the two masses of light and shadow, perspective in the head, proportion and anatomy of the features. All of the drawings are in white and sanguine pastel pencil, but the information and approach applies to all media. $16.50 (Amazon discount price)

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The syllabus for December is to continue ... most of you are working on painting projects of your own choice. However, I will be setting the colored block still lifes up for the month and I highly recommend them to everyone who has not done them. You will learn more about color from this than you ever can painting from a photograph. If you asked my advice, it would be to do these. You need 9 x 12" or 11 x 14" canvas panels for them. I will set a different one up each week. Do one, do them all. One week per ... don't labor over these. Observe color spot; paint color spot. It's an exercise.

There are several steps to the process.

1. Quickly block-in the blocks on your canvas. Draw them as close to life size as possible.

2. Quickly make a single choice (or color spot) for each the side of each block and the background adjacent to it.

3. Cover the canvas before you go back and assess your choices or make any changes.

4. As you work compare each color spot to the one next to it by running through the three properties of color. Is it warmer/cooler, brighter/duller, lighter/darker than the spot next to it? Relate.

5. Don't jump all over the canvas. Relate each spot to the adjacent spot.

6. As you compare on your second/third/fourth pass at the canvas, make any adjustment you see. Trust your eye, not your brain. If the gray cloth looks alizarin-ish, add alizarin.

Keep in mind two types of comparisons you are making.

1. Compare the adjacent sides of a color block in the set-up. Then make the same comparison in your painting. So, in the set-up, compare the top of the orange block to the side of the orange block. The, compare the top of the orange block to the side of the orange block in your painting. Do relate the top in the set-up to the top in the painting. Relate within the set-up, then relate within the painting. This is to this as that is to that. The goal is to accurately see the relationships in the set-up.

2. Check the accuracy of your color spots by rapidly flicking your eyes back and forth between the same spot in the set up and the same spot in the painting. Quickly glance back and forth between the top of the orange block in the set-up and the top of the orange block in the painting. What is lacking in your color spot will rise to the surface. If your spot needs green, you will see it's lack as you glance back and forth.

So, relate this is to this as that is to that to make your color spots. Then, relate this to that to check yourself.

Wow, see what I mean ... you need to do this exercise. Because what you do in it is what you should be doing all of the time when painting from life whatever the subject matter. This is why you cannot learn about color from photographs. The photograph is not subtle enough to make distinctions. It doesn't see them, so you don't see them.

I get a lot of questions about how to photograph artwork. I am far from an expert on the subject. Here is a blog post with a list of links on the subject. It is from ://the Crafted Webm@ster: Internet Marketing for Artists.

"The topic of authenticity has been in our attention a lot at Art Marketing Secrets lately. It started with an innocent discussion about why some art feels like decoration and other art truly feels like art. And what is art really anyway?

Well – we could all sit around debating that last point until the cows and the pink elephants come home, but the question of real art vs. decoration and why is one which doesn’t go away.

My opinion is that it’s all about authenticity. It explains to me why it’s possible to have a technically perfect piece of art that leaves me feeling nothing and yet sometimes I see a work that exhilarates me but is lacking in a mastery of the craft. It also explains why some artists can create a truly great piece of art with just a single stroke of a pencil or a few brushstrokes of paint apparently applied quite haphazardly.

Indulge me and I’ll give you my personal view on authenticity. And I didn’t study psychology so be warned!

I think each one of us has a chariot and a team of very powerful horses – just like Charlton Heston’s character in “Ben Hur”. Each of the horses represents a different aspect of our nature and our dreams.

Our subconscious program which is often operating on very basic thought processes like survival and pleasure or what our parents or teachers wanted for us.

Our conscious thoughts which can be very focused or scattered like autumn leaves.

Our emotions which run independently and explore the whole spectrum of pleasure and pain, sometimes from moment to moment.

Our physical reality where we are challenged with learning and mastering the actual techniques that can translate all the impulses from those other parts of us onto the canvas or into the clay or glass or metal we work with.

And then, beyond all that noise, standing in our chariot, very calm in the midst of this vortex of experience and activity is the true us – the dreamer of the dream. We had a plan and a purpose for this race but what was it?

Will we remember and take charge of the horses and run the best race? Or will we stay half conscious and let every horse run in its own direction and rip the chariot apart?

When we connect with our true dreams and purpose and master the incredibly powerful team of horses pulling our chariot we launch forth at maximum speed into a zone where anything is possible and our dreams can pour forth freely into our work.

Its a recipe for creating great art or a true dream or a true life.

What does this have to do with selling art? People can sense authenticity a mile away. It is such a powerful thing to see the work of a person who is truly aligned in their purpose and efforts. Like a big electromagnet, it can attract exactly the right people who will love and purchase your work – if that is your dream.